While in Washington, D.C. for the Lemkin Summit, I had the opportunity to meet with several members of Congress and\/or their staff to discuss current or upcoming legislation related to the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. Because 2019 ushered in a new Congress, everything done by the previous Congress has been thrown out, and we begin again. That means, even if a bill or resolution was passed in one chamber prior to the changing of the guard, it must start from zero all over again and be introduced. Moreover, since this Congress is relatively new, and members are settling into their new posts and responsibilities, legislation on issues related to our cause is has been moving slowly. With a few exceptions, there aren\u2019t many robust pieces of legislation backed by a substantial number of co-sponsors.<\/p>\n
While this environment creates its challenges, in terms of handing a member of Congress a polished, well-supported piece of bipartisan legislation, it does have its benefits, too. With a relatively clean slate, JWW and our partners can alert congressional officials to atrocity situations and legislative gaps \u2014 needs in our movement that they can proactively work to fill. Hopefully, with our urging, someone will introduce companion legislation to speed up the process of creating pro-prevention law; hopefully someone will link up with another legislator already taking the lead on an important and timely issue, thereby piquing the interest of other members of Congress; hopefully someone will reintroduce a bill that had garnered heavy support last year and remains as important today as it was then. Sometimes just inspiring a policymaker to write a letter or issue a statement can play a tremendous role in bolstering social change activism on the ground. <\/p>\n
My legislative \u201casks\u201d varied, depending on with whom I was speaking and what chamber they belonged to. But, here is a summary of the country situations for which I advocated and the legislation I promoted:<\/p>\n
Thank you to the members of Congress and your staff for taking the time to talk with me and for your openness to learning more. JWW will continue to advocate for these and other pieces of legislation in order to keep the U.S. engaged in the fight against genocide and mass atrocities worldwide. Every statement from a member of Congress, every letter, every passage of a bill or resolution \u2014 even if in just one chamber \u2014 has an immense impact on local civil society and the survivors of genocide and mass atrocity. Let us join together to let them know we see them and to amplify their voices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While in Washington, D.C. for the Lemkin Summit, I had the opportunity to meet with several members of Congress and\/or their staff to discuss current or upcoming legislation related to the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. Because 2019 ushered in a new Congress, everything done by the previous Congress has been thrown out, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188,163],"tags":[128,134,305,155,389,130,298,170,173,195,207,153,225],"class_list":["post-22682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-features","category-spotlight-article","tag-drc","tag-adam-schiff","tag-burma","tag-china","tag-congress","tag-democratic-republic-of-the-congo","tag-karen-bass","tag-myanmar","tag-rohingya","tag-sudan","tag-syria","tag-uyghurs","tag-yemen","category-188","category-163","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}